Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

THE NATIONAL POLITICAL CRISIS PREDICTED AT THE DINNER came to pass that Monday-articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson were issued for high crimes and misdemeanors for his defiance of Congress during reconstruction of the Union-and the public fell into a fervor. The lines at the ticket office that day were thinly populated-even most of the speculators were gone! Observing the public distraction and considering Dickens's health, Dolby canceled the next Boston reading series.

The staff did all they could to entertain Dickens during the quiet period. Dolby and Osgood raced each other in a walking match dreamed up by Dickens, which also gave Dickens an excuse to call for a grand dinner party. “That Osgood!” Dolby commented to Henry, who helped him prepare for the contest by fitting him with seamless socks. “Hardly ten stone and a half, my luck, I daresay he can move faster than me in any weather, much less in snow and ice. With his rheumatic smile all along. Mark my words, he is faster and stronger than he appears-in racing and otherwise. Confound that Johnson for being impeached.” Soon Dolby and Osgood were both leaving town to address the changes to the schedule. Tom and Henry Scott were left at the Parker House with Dickens. Compared with the rest of their time in America, these days at Parker's without any readings were absurdly slow. The weather and Dickens's health confined the novelist to his rooms for the most part. He was weakened by his sneezing and coughing and most of all by missing Gadshill.

When he was not at his desk writing, Dickens would talk with anyone who was nearby, waiter, staff or hotel guest. Tom was asked to bring the latest telegraphed reports to Dickens's rooms whenever they arrived from Dolby and Osgood. Another time, Dickens had received a letter from home that sent him into a melancholy mood. When Tom came to take mail for the last post of the day, Dickens was still staring at the letter.

“Surely not John Thompson!” Dickens exclaimed.

“Chief?”

“Thompson is one of my men at Gadshill. The police discovered he was stealing money from my office cash box. After all these years! Why, I trusted him with my babies-I mean my manuscripts, delivering them here and there. What I am to do with, or for, the miserable man, God knows!”

“I'm very sorry, Chief.”

“Tell me,” the Chief said, “my good Branagan, do you read my books?”

Tom paused with surprise. Usually Dickens talked near but not really to him. He also remembered Dolby's words about their mission to keep Dickens content.

Dickens laughed at his hesitation. “Oh, you may tell the truth, Mr. Branagan! One more blasted ‘Dickensite’ and I may tip over from the weight. Nothing terrifies a writer like meeting his reader for the first time.”

“I do not often read novels, sir.”

“Sir? I want only strangers calling me ‘sir,’ and in truth I'd prefer strangers not to call me anything at all. Do you know why I am called Chief?”

“No.”

“Dolby never felt comfortable calling me Charles or Dickens. Well, I had at least been able to convince him to call me Boz.” Dickens continued his story, saying that one afternoon during a reading tour of Chester, Dolby had come to find Dickens in front of a fire with a Turkish fez and a bright muffler around his neck because cold air was coming into the room at the Queen's Hotel.

How do you feel? Dolby had asked, concerned.

Dickens had grumbled to this: Like something good to eat being kept cool in a larder. How do I look?

Like an old chief , Dolby had answered, but without the pipe.

“That is where it comes from. I respect Dolby more than I can say, for he overcame the same defect of speech that my India boy-that is my third son, Frank, now in Bengal with the police-had suffered with as a child from his severe want of application. Now, no novels at all, you say?”

Tom had forgotten the earlier subject. “Novels and romances pretend,” he commented.

“They lie, you mean to say?”

“Yes,” Tom replied. “They pretend to be what they are not.”

“The books do pretend, Mr. Branagan. Surely. But that is not all. Novels are filled with lies, but squeezed in between is even more that is true-without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see? The writer of books always puts himself in, his real self, but you must be careful of not taking him for his next -door neighbor.”

“It is still only imagination. Isn't it?”

“Let me show you something. Suppose this wineglass on the table were a character.” Tom nodded at the demonstration. “Good. Now, fancy it a man, imbue it with certain qualities, and soon fine filmy webs of thoughts spin and weave around it until it assumes form and beauty and becomes instinct with life. From there, the writing comes of itself until those two words, sorrowfully penned at last, stare at me, in capitals: THE END. But if I don't strike while the iron is hot-by iron I mean myself-I drift off again.”

Tom was not certain he fully understood, but he said he saw what Dickens meant.

“Do you?” asked Dickens. “That was a quick change of heart, Branagan. You're a slap-up man of good sense, I think. I'd rather you be honest with me next time, I'd always much rather that, whatever dear Dolby tells you.”

Taking Dickens's instruction to be honest to heart, Tom's thoughts turned to what was really on his mind since the cancellation of the readings. If Mrs. Barton had been attending all of Dickens's readings in Boston, as Tom suspected, she would have been disappointed, bitterly, by their cancellation. She would have felt personally insulted. If every other person in the country was too distracted by the impeachment to notice, she would not be-she might not even know there was an impeachment.

That night, Tom woke to the usual fire engines clanging outside. He had been dreaming when the noises pulled him out of his sleep.

He shook out his head as he sat in bed with his old flannels hanging on him. How strange the dream had been. The scene was a terrible railway accident like the one at Staplehurst where Dickens had nearly perished. Only Tom was in the novelist's place in this vision, and lowered himself down rocky ledge by rocky ledge to the bloodstained ravine where people screamed. Sheep and cattle, too, glided by his face as he tried to pull the victims to the shore of the river, only they were all dead, human and animal. Above, the first compartment of the train dangled over the broken bridge, raining loose pages of all Dickens's books into the river below.

Tom thought about this terrifying dream as he splashed his face with water from the wash basin and rubbed his eyes. His fingertips felt raw and cold against his skin. It was then he had an urgent premonition. Since tomorrow they would be leaving Boston, if Louisa Barton were going to act, it would be tonight. If she was not already at the Parker House, she would be. Tom knew it to be so.

Perhaps he was emboldened by the fact that Dolby and Osgood were not there to reprimand him. Tom dressed hastily and went down the hall to Dickens's door, where a hotel waiter sat guarding the entrance.

“What is it now?” asked the waiter, stirring spasmodically from a half sleep. He brushed Tom's hand off of his arm. “I'm dead beat tonight, fellow.”

“I need to speak with Mr. Dickens.”

“I doubt he desires an audience with anyone at this hour! Especially some Paddy porter! Come back in the morning.”

“You've had too much at the bar.” Tom waited, his eyes remaining fixed on the waiter.